


Wishbone

by paxlux



Series: wishbone [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-01
Updated: 2011-06-01
Packaged: 2017-10-20 00:35:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/206924
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paxlux/pseuds/paxlux
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The building’s haunted, the owner pulling up stakes and the car breaks down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wishbone

**Author's Note:**

> Post Season 6. AUish. In hiding, thereabouts.

The sign is yellow with black letters in a font from the 1970s. They’re in a diner in Arizona. The special is fried chicken with gravy and mashed potatoes and cole slaw and Dean gets dark meat, Sam gets white meat and so Sam ends up with the wishbone. ‘C’mon,’ Sam says, ‘Dean,’ so they lick off their fingers to get a good grip on the bone where Sam’s cleaned it thoroughly and they pull on 3. Dean gets the bigger piece, crowing in victory, shooting Sam with finger guns and Sam tosses the small broken bone onto his plate, ‘yeah, yeah, just make your wish already.’ Dean closes his eyes, fairly glowing with the superstitious weight of his wish, and then he hmms in his throat and says, ‘Got it, dude. Done.’

‘What’d you wish for,’ Sam asks, and Dean waves a drumstick at him.

‘Nuh-uh, can’t tell, Sam, won’t come true.’

Sam rolls his eyes and scoops up some cole slaw, messy on his fork.

-

The hunt’s a day away, not really that far. The door is green with weather scratches. It’s a bar, which tickles Dean to no end, a hunt in an honest-to-God bar.

The body’s in the basement, you can reach it by the stairs in the back that go down into the earth, and the basement is pretty much untouched except for the body hidden in the hole in the wall and the bar’s inventory. The owner never went back into that dark corner and it doesn’t take much to wall it back up into the dark.

They end up in town for two days, then three, then a week goes by.

Somehow.

In the end, they stay because the building’s haunted, the owner pulling up stakes and the car breaks down.

Dean’s parked in the alley, grease on his forehead and along his arms as Sam sits on the cooler, doing a crossword and the owner comes to them. He shakes his head and shakes his hands and says he’s leaving town, but he’ll give ‘em the place for a song, an absolute song. The bar does fine, the taxes are nothing in this part of town, and they can have it. He’s throwing in the towel, washing his hands of this miserable place.

Sam watches his brother’s fingers tighten around a wrench like he might chuck it at this guy’s head, but Sam says, ‘Can we tell you in the morning.’

The owner says, ‘Yeah, but I’m leaving in two days.’

That night, Dean won’t look at Sam, but he’s got a curl around his mouth, as if he’s thinking about it.

Sam calls Bobby the next morning on a whim. They’ll need money.

And Bobby laughs.

-

The place needs a good scrubbing down. It’s not tumbledown, just a little dirty and Dean says, ‘We can’t spitshine it, Sam, ‘cause then it won’t be a _bar_.’

Sloshing water in a bucket, Sam glares at him, but Dean points at him, all determined. ‘I mean it.’

The tables are sturdy; the chairs are beaten up, but stand on four legs. There are two pool tables towards the back and the felts are worn, but not marred though the ball receptacles underneath are sort of broken, so you have to dig to get the balls out sometimes. There’s cues, and chalk, and a dartboard with enough darts to get through a game.

Warped silver mirrors behind the bar. Big lights hang overhead. No neon, ‘no fucking neon,’ Dean says, ‘tired of that shit.’

‘What, you tryin’ to be classy,’ Sam says.

‘No neon. This isn’t Applebee’s.’

The bathrooms are nothing to write home about, but they’re functional and covered in graffiti. Dean takes to reading the graffiti out loud as they clean and Sam can’t help it, he’s laughing so hard. Stupid lewd pictures tell them which one is men’s and which one is women’s and Sam says, ‘Oh _hell_ no,’ and promptly takes them down with a hammer, then just gets some stencils and paint and the doors say MEN and WOMEN and that’s all they need.

A good stock of beer and liquor and Dean says, ‘No wine.’

‘Good, we wouldn’t wanna attract a certain kind of clientele,’ Sam says drily, rubbing down the bar. He carefully carves wards in the ends and slicks over them with lacquer. Dean spends a few hours on his back, putting more wards on the bottom of each table with the point of a knife.

The bar doesn’t need paint really, but they want to put in angel sigils and whatever the hell else they can think of, so they paint. A color for a bar. Appropriate. They argue in the paint aisle at Home Depot for twenty minutes until Sam says, ‘You realize we’re _picking out paint together_. At Home Depot.’

Dean gives up and wanders off to find tools for the car.

-

The place didn’t have a name until a demon strolled in wearing a thin redhead and a sneer and she said, ‘Oh, so this is where you find Armageddon.’

It becomes a byword for hunters. An in-joke.

People don’t really call it that much anymore even though it’s on the sign. They call it Geddon and if you don’t know what they’re talking about, then you don’t know what they’re talking about. Goin’ to Geddon. Don’t wait up.

-

Sam’s the bartender, well, they both play bartender, but Dean likes to sit on a stool off to the side, a warming beer in front of him and he talks to the people that come through and he’s always got a gun in his jeans and Sam’s fast with a shotgun.

Sam’s the bartender because he can actually deal with people; Dean’ll just tell ‘em to go fuck themselves if they ask for something like sex on the beach, gimme a Cosmo, uh no, get your elbows the fuck offa my bar; Sam can talk to people right and Dean can make ‘em laugh once they get to know him.

They don’t put themselves out there for people unless there’s a fight, some sort of misunderstanding; they’re their own bouncers which suits them fine, years of being in the middle of bar fights and streaking through the door with people lighting out after them and now they get to throw people into the street. Get the fuck out and stay the fuck out.

They’re dangerous in a new way. They like it. It’s simple.

‘You enjoy that way too much,’ Sam says one night and Dean grins, all manic power, wiping his hands on his jeans. ‘You’re gonna be _starting_ the fights soon.’

‘As long as I end ‘em, Sammy.’

Sam’s the one hunters come to for information and they keep a tip jar on the corner of the bar and Sam’s laptop off on a little table for just such a situation. Sometimes, Dean’ll be staring off into space, listening, and Sam knows he’s thinking of Ash, of Jo and Ellen, while some hard pair of hunters hover nearby discussing demonic activity. Those nights, Sam closes early and tells the hunters to come back in the morning.

It’s the least he can do.

And sometimes, Sam gets stuck wiping at a spot on the bar, a banishing sigil just waiting for blood, right where it’s handiest, so Dean gets an arm around his shoulders and says, ‘Hey, asshole, I’m not paying you to clean.’

‘What’re you paying me for then.’

‘To stand there and look pretty so people will throw money at you for liquor, you silly fuck.’

-

They serve beer in cold bottles and draft beer in jars because jars are cheaper than pint glasses, so when they break (it’s a bar, things break and they break often), the jars are easy to replace. The liquor tumblers are littler jam jars, the kind with the small lip because the lid pops off. So, whatever, they use jars. Never mind that Sam keeps a stash for himself and tries to make his own spaghetti sauce and pickles. They like the jars. No one complains. Dean rubs his fingertips over the glass impressions of fruit and the names BALL and MASON; they’re good luck, almost better than runes.

-

It’s a big brick affair, in an odd rundown part of town, not shabby, but left behind by time, and the people who love it love it with a sense of generations. There’s a barbershop down the street and a movie theater that plays dollar movies, a month after they leave the big cinema chains. A record store Dean loiters in after he found a turntable at a garage sale, along with the two mismatched chairs in their living room and the chest of drawers with the fancy gold handles too small for Sam’s fingers. Dean plays records as loud as the speakers will go, music waterfalling out the windows as the weather goes warmer, like an open fire hydrant. A bowling alley squares off at the end and just about every Sunday, Sam’s there, kicking Dean’s ass though Dean’s getting better. Someday it’ll be a real competition and on this particular Sunday, Dean trounces Sam who’s rubbing his wrist, ‘dude, there’s a storm coming, I can feel it and it aches, man, it aches, no wonder I lost.’ Pawnshop, clock and watch repair, a rattling laundromat, and a used bookstore Dean shoved Sam into the third week they were there, ‘get outta my way, Sammy, you’re driving me up the fucking wall.’

‘Fuck you too, Dean, I’ll bring you back some pop-up books.’

Sam makes his own bookshelves. They’re just pieces of wood nailed together, but he doesn’t hit any of his fingers, grinning big and full of dimples at Dean who can’t help but laugh.

‘Knew you were good for something. You feel manly now?’

Smirking, Sam gets Dean in a headlock and wrestles him to the floor. They almost demolish the bookshelves and Dean loses, so Sam makes him cook dinner.

‘Now I feel manly,’ Sam says, kicked back on the couch (hauled away from a little old lady over on Fletcher Ave. with her blessings and an apple pie), his feet propped up on the coffee table (found out on Green Street). ‘Bring me a beer.’

‘Bitch,’ Dean snarls, ‘get your own fucking beer or you’ll be wearing these sloppy joes.’

‘Jerk, don’t be so damn jealous of my manliness.’

-

They started out sleeping on mattresses tossed on the floor. Then Dean builds them a bed. The second floor of the building is just open space, probably meant to be more bar or whatever, but there’s a kitchen and a bathroom and it doesn’t take much to have it set up with cable. So Dean builds their bed big enough for the two of them. Sam watches him work and goes through the newspaper for new garage sales. Later, he carefully takes the splinters out of Dean’s palms and licks along his lifeline and his brother doesn’t taste of sawdust, but salt.

Sam still has nightmares, night terrors, times in the pitch black when he snatches himself up tight, curled like he’s back in a cage and burning, hands and arms braced over his face.

They sleep better next to each other. Like the old, old days. When they didn’t have Enochian carved into their ribs.

-

The town is small enough for them to be lost and big enough for them to be overlooked.

No one knows they’re brothers except the hunters who come through. No one cares. Only about six people know their last name and only Pyotr down at the barbershop talks guns and hunting, deer and grouse and bear.

-

The days seem faster. As if stopping speeds things up. Even though they’ve never been this slow before, never been this still.

Sam breaks the spine on his paperback and says, ‘Feels like the calm before the fucking storm.’

Dean doesn’t want to agree, but he has to. He eats peanuts and scatters the shells on the floor.

There’s sawdust on the floor, mixed in with holy ashes.

There’s a small garage out back and the Impala sits there, waiting, because they all feel it.

They’re hiding. And hopefully their disguise will stay.

For now, they’ve got Armageddon and beers going warm in front of them and Dean tinkers with the car on Saturday mornings.

-

Dean lets himself. He lets himself watch his brother, eyes on him and he still can’t believe what the years have done to Sam, the tiny baby he carried that hellish night and now Sam’s stretching, curling his hands over the doorframe, his shirt riding up above his jeans. He looks like he could pull down the world.

It’s been years, since once upon a time, when Sam put his hand on Dean’s belly and nosed along Dean’s temple and said his name.

Years.

They’ve been on the run. Now they’re breathing slow and steady.

Years.

Sam starts the coffee going and glances at him, those wild-glass eyes and Dean smiles hurriedly.

Then on Tuesday, Sam tries to change the sheets around a drowsy, lazy Dean, and it makes sense. He catches Dean’s mouth in a heavy kiss and Dean rolls to kiss him back and laundry doesn’t matter anymore.

It might not be anything, until it is, until they aren’t just sleeping in the same bed, they’re greedy, Sam pushing his fingers into Dean’s mouth, Dean pressed against the long line of Sam, fit together like the bed.

They’re back into this, back in the fight. Sam falls back into it just as fast as Dean does.

-

The first day they install the jukebox, it clicks to life around one in the afternoon, as Dean’s eating a sandwich.

Jim Morrison breaks into their day, telling them to keep their eyes on the road, their hands upon the wheel, and Sam sprints down the stairs.

When they plugged it in, it hadn’t done anything except blink at them, as if it was confused and now it was playing The Doors and Sam says, ‘What the hell.’

‘It likes our bar,’ Dean says.

They don’t use the word _roadhouse_.

-

The juke is another story. There are back rooms at the bowling alley and one week, Gertie, the feisty pink-haired owner, starts hearing music, usually around midnight. She mentions it to Sam that Thursday as she stops by to get her swig of whiskey on the way home and when she says, ‘Yeah, I dunno where it’s coming from, but it just starts up. Midnight. Like clockwork,’ Sam gives her an extra finger of whiskey for free.

That night, they break into the alley and find a whole forgotten wonderland. Popcorn machine, cotton candy machine, mechanical fortune-teller, a busted pinball, and a jukebox. It’s got good tunes in it too, ranging from Johnny Cash and John Lee Hooker to Connie Francis and Patsy Cline to Zeppelin and Cream and Hendrix and Janis Joplin, not nearly enough Stones, with many stops in between for all the stuff beer needs to taste good. Dean’s licking his lips just looking at it; he can get more music for it, more variety, more cigarette-and-sawdust songs, but it’s coming on midnight, so Sam bodily drags Dean off into a dark corner, and they wait.

Like clockwork, at midnight, there’s a shadow along the wall and the jukebox flickers to life. Their gun barrels catch a ragged teenager with long blonde hair and scared brown eyes and she says, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ so fast the words slur.

She goes by Billie and all they know is she’s homeless. She’s named herself after Billie Holliday (#34 in the jukebox, “Summertime”).

Gertie adopts her on the spot as she’s slouched eating nachos at the concession stand counter.

‘I never get down there to clean or anything. I forgot those rooms were there.’ She sets up the popcorn machine by the shoe desk, the cotton candy machine at the concessions, the fortune-teller by the arcade and sends the pinball machine out for repairs.

Then a truck appears outside the bar with the jukebox and Sam swears up and down for a week that Dean almost pissed his pants in delight.

But, you see, the juke knows things. Even after they found out about Billie turning it on at midnight for a little pick-me-up music, Dean’s still convinced there’s something not quite right with the juke, and he’s almost got Sam on his side.

One time, a werewolf walked in and Warren Zevon spun into existence, those notes tripping along like Lon Chaney walking with the Queen. It didn’t end in a fight, though it did end in a lot of guns and silver being pulled and an uneasy truce started long enough for people to continue with their drinking.

A hunter showed up with a ghost stuck to him like a locket on a chain, his own oracle, he said, and the juke stirred up again to play a sad song about how that fire of unknown origin took his baby away.

Some afternoons when they start it up, it informs Sam and Dean how they’re bad company and they can’t deny; some nights at last call, it’ll tell the bar that we all need someone to bleed on.

If someone yells for “Free Bird,” it’ll play, like a good-natured joke. But only once; it decided long ago that “Free Bird” only gets one play.

When everyone’s gone, it’ll whir as Dean’s stacking chairs and Sam’s cleaning the bar and long low chords will break out in the sweet of the night, put a candle in the window, 'cause I feel I've got to move. Those nights, they close up the next day and take a drive, going wherever, but they always come back.

They’re curious to see what it’ll do if a vampire comes in. When the third demon waltzed in, the third in about as many weeks, the jukebox talked about being around for a long, long year, stealing many a man’s soul and faith. Sam left it unplugged for the next two days after that and they reinforced the devil’s traps in the doorways.

The second time Dean kissed Sam, the juke whirred and whirred and whirred, but didn’t find a song.

-

There’s no fighting in Geddon, which should be a joke in and of itself and Sam likes it, smirks to himself about it and Dean catches him, shakes his head.

‘There’s something wrong with you, Sam,’ Dean says.

‘Well, whatever it is, it’s your fault,’ Sam says and Dean flips him off.

There’s no fighting; most people are welcome. It’s a strange blend of civilian and hunter and Dean mutters something about Mos Eisley and Sam says, ‘You come up with some random shit, but man, Star Wars, that takes the cake.’

‘Hey, be proud of our wretched hive of scum and villainy.’

(One night, Dean wraps himself around Sam who’s shaking and talking about blood in his mouth and later after he’s calmed down enough to stop chewing his fingers, Sam says, ‘Thank you, Obi-Wan, you’re my only hope,’ and Dean grunts, ‘Shut up, Sammy, you come up with some random shit.’)

The hunters know enough to keep their mouths shut around the civilians, even when they’re bothering Sam, and the civilians don’t know enough to realize what kind of danger they’re brushing up against.

It’s how Sam’s seen life all along and Dean remembers being a teenager, realizing how life was going to be, all these ignorant people who couldn’t see the layers underneath.

Or it’s just a bar and people play pool and get drunk and have sex in the bathrooms and Dean bitches about it the next day and Sam says, ‘Oh, like you never fucked in a bar bathroom. Ditching me at the table –‘

So they fuck in the bathroom. Like everyone else.

-

At least once a month, they get intel from Bobby and close up for a weekend to take care of family business.

People on the block figure they’ve got sick and elderly to check up on.

But when Sam puts out the sign, CLOSED FOR FAMILY BUSINESS, he hears Dean pleading in the forest so very long ago, saving people hunting things.

-

Sam writes. Or rather, he types. Like crazy. It drives Dean crazy.

Dad’s journal is somewhere in the trunk. But this is Sam’s and he’s created a database or some shit. ‘This shouldn’t be some list, some sort of guilt trip,’ Dean said, and Sam almost clocked him, breathing hard.

Some mornings they wake up early and disappear out of town into the woods and empty bullets into tree trunks.

It helps with the memories.

-

One night, Billie and Gertie are headed home, stopping by for that whiskey, ‘you boys be good,’ she says as she drops her money (she never wants her change) and some new grubby face on a slobby body tries to press Billie up against the bar, ‘hey there, sugar, you look a little lost, why don’t you lemme help ya.’ Dean’s got his gun out and Sam’s got a finger on the shotgun trigger when Billie pulls back and punches the guy in the nose. Blood on her knuckles, Billie gets her second job that night, working at Geddon, cleaning jars and balancing drinks and fishing pool balls out of the broken table when she’s not helping at the bowling alley.

They get another kid, a boy about college age, who follows Dean around with his eyes and Sam takes to watching him like a hawk. The kid sweeps around the juke and it sways into life about a fascination with the black-eyed blues, and Sam gets the kid by the elbow into the back storeroom, Dean trailing along in confusion.

It turns out Nate was possessed about a year ago and almost died when a hunter exorcised him and it went sideways. He’d been trailing the hunting community for months; he’d heard about the Winchesters. Wanted to meet them for himself.

‘Like fucking celebrities,’ Dean says, pulling a hand down his face. ‘Just what we need.’

Sam nudges Nate and says, ‘Why us.’

‘Heard tell y’all were the ones.’

‘The ones?’ Dean prompts and he’s starting to get pissed, hands clenching, so Sam steps in front and says, ‘The ones what.’

‘The dangerous ones,’ Nate says, shrugging, fiddling with the hem of his t-shirt. ‘Y’all stopped the Apocalypse.’

He doesn’t mention _starting_ the Apocalypse, says only that they ground their boots into its fiery shitty face and Sam kind of recoils a little, but Nate doesn’t notice. He’s not hellbent on hero worship or learning the tricks of the trade; he’s a curious kid who went through a demon time and came out the other side alive.

It comes as a relief to have him around, since he knows what he knows and Billie doesn’t and he helps shield her. Nate doesn’t say much else after that, apparently he got it out of his system, but he’s handy with the repairs and knows his way around plumbing when the toilets threaten to back up.

He has a canny knack for spotting weapons and he keeps them informed between pours of beer and he doesn’t steal from the till.

It’s hard to trust people, anyone else, but late one Tuesday (Sam has a thing about Tuesdays), Dean says to Nate, ‘Hey, kid, lock up,’ as Sam bullies him up the stairs to their couch and their TV and some slow making out.

It’s hard to trust people. They have salt on hand and weapons hidden everywhere and they spilled blood in every corner just in case.

Bobby calls and tells them it’s all quiet.

-

The Impala growls through the night, speeding because that’s her only way of traveling and Dean rolls down his window, yelling some stupid shit Sam can’t quite hear as the wind claps it away.

The headlights are bright on the road in front of them after almost a whole day spent crawling through sewers to find a shapeshifter, ‘moist motherfuckers, why can’t they choose somewhere else to be all fucking weird,’ Dean complains, and they smell like hastily-taken showers trying to mask _eau de public works_.

It doesn’t matter.

The Impala knows the way. She’s got her destination.

They’re headed back to the bar.

All roads lead to.

-

They don’t feel settled.

Dean loses quarters in the couch and Sam spills the coffee grounds and sometimes they run out of laundry detergent (‘your clothes are too damn big ‘cause you’re too damn big,’ Dean says logically, ‘that’s why there’s never any detergent’; ‘maybe if you _bought_ some, it wouldn’t be an issue,’ Sam says, ‘instead of forgetting all the fucking time’) and sometimes the toaster burns the bread.

The jukebox plays “Midnight Rider” and says to them they’ve got one more silver dollar.

-

Jake from the record store stops in one night with a basket of fried chicken and biscuits, a thank-you from Amanda, his wife, for Dean keeping an eye on the store (‘and not stealing anything,’ Sam says) last Wednesday while she ran to the doctor. There are at least two whole fryers under the towel in the basket, maybe three, the biscuits are homemade and there’s butter in the fridge and corn on the cobs from the store. Dean watches disgruntled as Sam makes a salad. They eat what they can that night, and then there’s cold chicken for lunch the next day; dark meat for Dean, white meat for Sam and then Sam makes a muffled sound of surprise.

He carefully cleans off a wishbone with his teeth and Dean smirks.

‘Yeah, Sammy, gimme.’

They grab ends and then before they can pull it, Sam says, ‘What’d you wish for last time, can you tell me now, bastard.’

Dean grins easy, little boyish smile for Sam, on this rainy Monday afternoon. Then he kisses Sam and breaks the wishbone.

**Author's Note:**

> The Doors - Roadhouse Blues. Warren Zevon - Werewolves of London. Blue Öyster Cult - Fire of Unknown Origin. Bad Company – Bad Company. The Rolling Stones – Let It Bleed. Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free Bird. Creedence Clearwater Revival - Long As I Can See The Light. The Rolling Stones - Sympathy For The Devil. Joe Cocker - Black-Eyed Blues. The Allman Brothers - Midnight Rider. Yes, I know for a fact there’s Black Sabbath and Metallica and Motorhead and Grand Funk Railroad (and numerous others) in the jukebox somewhere.


End file.
